


0-day

by Masu_Trout



Category: Deus Ex (Video Games)
Genre: Computer Viruses, Foot Jobs, M/M, Multiple Orgasms, Oral Sex, Pining, Pritchard Keeps Discovering Kinks He Never Knew He Had, Rival Sex, Sex Pollen, Something Made Them Do It, Technological Kink, Very Much to His Dismay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-05 18:38:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15869442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/pseuds/Masu_Trout
Summary: A corporate espionage plot leaves Jensen and Pritchard infected with an obscure piece of malware—one that, to Pritchard's dismay, leaves its victims desperately craving physical contact.Pritchard needs to find a solution. He also needs to keep himself sane. And, for both of those, he has no choice but to rely on Jensen.





	0-day

**Author's Note:**

> This is set to be the longest thing I've ever posted on this site, and it's techno-sex-pollen. Why not, right?

Jensen was on his knees in the corner of Pritchard's office, his breathing too careful and controlled to be natural, perfectly still except for the way his carbon-black hands occasionally clenched and unclenched against his thighs.

There was something about those hands of his. Sleek, segmented, with a quiet promise of violence in that military-grade styling. Pritchard couldn't stop looking. Augmentations had never been his _thing_ , particularly, but he knew from the hospital reports Sarif kept on the server that Jensen had lost his legs and now he couldn't stop wondering just how high the replacements went before they gave way to flesh again. Couldn't stop imagining kneeling in front of him, putting his hands on his knees and sliding up and up and up—

"Fuck," Pritchard said, and very nearly pulled his ponytail out trying to run a hand through his hair.

"Told you it's strong," Jensen growled. His glasses shielded his eyes, but Pritchard had a feeling he knew where Jensen was looking.

Pritchard shook his head, trying to banish the lingering thoughts and knowing all the while it was useless. "Worse for you than it is for me, I'm sure."

"You want to keep making guesses, or you want to figure out what the hell's happening?"

"I already know what this is," Pritchard said, "not too many aug-viruses have this kind of… signature. And I was being serious, by the way—it hits you worse the more augs you have." Which meant Jensen _really_ had to be feeling this. It was easy to forget just how much he had packed in there when he always wore that heavy coat. "It's Russian military tech built for the start of the cyber-warfare era, abandoned and then rediscovered by independent hackers. It made waves a couple years back on some darknet sites, until someone got a fix working."

The words 'military tech' seemed to focus Jensen somewhat. His gaze snapped up towards Pritchard's eyes—and Pritchard's mind did not linger on the visual of Adam on his knees, staring up at him—and he said, "So there's a fix."

Pritchard paused. "Well, yes."

Adam took a deep, steady breath that broke halfway through into something like a sob. "Stop stalling and tell me what the catch is."

"There's no catch! It's just—I mean, I don't keep every patch to every obscure aug-virus onsite on the off-chance some brainless corporate saboteur decides to infect a handprint scanner. That would be horrible security."

The knowledge that the saboteur in question was already in custody—and quite likely to face charges for terroristic distribution of malicious software, once he and Jensen managed to get their heads together enough to report the full effects to Sarif—was about the only comfort here. Maybe he'd drain the asshole's bank account too, once he could think again, send the proceeds to some obscure charity or other. It would make him feel better.

"So…" Jensen said.

"So, half an hour to find, verify, and download the patch. Minimum."

Jensen made a noise like someone had kicked him in the throat, and his hands dug so fiercely into his thighs he would have crushed bone had there been bone left to crush. 

(That answered at least part of his question, Pritchard thought, except—fuck, _no_ , he wasn't thinking about Jensen's thighs. At all.)

"Why are you just standing here, then?" Jensen snapped, ragged.

"Because _someone_ wanted to talk things out instead of just trusting me to do my job," Pritchard retorted, but all the same he went obediently to his desk and sat down in front of his computer. Half an hour, he'd be fine, there wasn't a thing in the world easier for him than this—

Except for the heat that wouldn't quite go away long enough to let him focus, and the way he could _hear_ Jensen's deep breathing behind him. He kept shifting his weight on the carpet, and every time he did Pritchard would tense up a bit in anticipation.

Finally, Pritchard paused in the middle of typing an address, pulled his hands away from the keyboard long enough to turn and motion at Jensen. "Come here."

"It's been five minutes."

"Thank you, yes, it's not like my computer has a clock _on the screen_ or anything. It's…" Pritchard sighed. "The virus, the symptoms are supposed to abate somewhat with physical touch. Even, ah—even if it's strictly platonic. It'll go faster that way."

And wasn't this a sign of how badly affected Jensen had to be: he didn't even so much as offer a bit of unneeded commentary before pulling his hands away from their death grip on his thighs and crawling ( _crawling_ ) over to Pritchard's side. 

His augmented hands reached up, one against the bottom of Pritchard's jacket and the other on his knee. His head bowed until he was resting with his forehead pressed right against the spot where Pritchard's shirt met his pants. He could feel the thin curved line of the glasses port, could feel the warmth of Jensen's body and the rise and fall of each breath. The spots Jensen pressed against felt gloriously cool, suddenly, even through the fabric, like fresh water poured over his aching skin.

"Keep going," Jensen said.

Pritchard swallowed. "Right." 

Half an hour. No, less. He never made an estimate he couldn't beat, provided the stakes were high enough, and right now the stakes were plenty high. Half an hour of heat in his veins and prickling through his skin and Jensen pressed up against him—

He started typing.

If there was one thing Pritchard prided himself on, it was his ability to sink into a system, to focus on his work and let the rest fall away until all he saw was the screen and all he felt were the keys under his fingers. He'd been good at it even before the augmentations, had never had any kind of patience for people who procrastinated and procrastinated and then frantically tried to catch up, but once he'd gotten Sarif Industries tech put in he'd found himself on an entirely new level. The same augs that were causing him all this trouble in the first place now let him slip past the physical torment until the itch under his skin wasn't quite so overwhelming and the aching heat seemed far away.

It wasn't gone. Not by a long shot. But it was bearable, so long as he kept his eyes up and his mind far away from wondering what it would be like to run his hands through Jensen's hair.

(His palms ached, though. All the way down to the tips of his fingers. If he could just reach down for a moment, just long enough to let that cold-water-shock chase the heat away…)

He was in the middle of hunting down a promising lead with a digital broker who owed him a favor; his own fault for not paying attention to anything outside his computer, maybe. Or, no, actually, scratch that, definitely Jensen's fault. Pritchard was the one who had to focus on both finding a cure and not clawing his own skin off. Jensen had exactly one job, and that job was _staying still_ and it most definitely did not involve sliding up the edge of Pritchard's shirt and—slowly, firmly—pressing one sleek hand palm-flat against his bare stomach.

This time it wasn't so much cool water as it was an electric current under his skin. Without fabric to mute it, the sudden gasping relief sent a rush of static through his mind. No more room for planning or self-control, just the knowledge that his skin didn't hurt where Jensen was touching him and therefore he needed Jensen touching him absolutely everywhere. Pritchard whined like an animal, desperate and wordless and completely beyond thought, and only barely remembered how to work his arms in time to keep himself from slamming face-first into his keyboard.

As it was, he managed to knock his elbow hard against the edge of his desk. "Fuck!" he hissed out, but he was grateful for the normal, physical, not-arousal-based pain. Kept him distracted enough to stop him jumping Jensen, and right now that was important. Crucial. Extreme high-priority, red-flagged and written in all-caps.

"Sorry," Jensen said, not moving away in the slightest. By now, Pritchard could have outlined the shape of his augmented hand without even looking; it had to be burned into his skin, the edge where agonizing heat turned into perfect coolness. 

"Focus," Pritchard snapped. He reached down with one hand to push Jensen away, found the curve of his cheekbone and traced along it with his hand cupping Jensen's cheek. Jensen made a quiet little noise at the touch, rubbed against Pritchard's hand like a dog, and then his lips parted just enough for him to lap at the meat of Pritchard's palm with his tongue.

There was a moment when Pritchard could have very easily died and simply not noticed. His entire world narrowed down, pinprick-small, to the sensation of Jensen's mouth on him. He came back to himself a second later, doubled over and grabbing at Jensen's face so harshly anyone else would have been left with a handprint-shaped bruise.

Jensen was looking back at him. This close, he could see the faint shape of his pupils, pitch dark and dilated, through the tinted glass. There was a tension in the curve of his mouth, in the lines of his posture: a tightly-wound spring, a pendulum stopped at the top of its arc. A predator holding itself back from the strike.

Pritchard thought again about Jensen's augs; close enough to reach out and touch, now, strong enough that Jensen could easily hold Pritchard down and crush him. He could imagine Jensen pinning him, one hand on his throat, and—what then? Tearing Pritchard's clothes off, forcing Pritchard's windpipe closed? It didn't matter which anymore. His body would respond the same way. They were the same thing, when it came down to it, because no matter which Jensen finally would have his hands against Pritchard to smooth away the boiling heat.

Every part of him that wasn't touching Jensen hurt so much more than it had only minutes ago. Was it actually getting worse? Or was he just feeling it more now that he remembered pleasure could exist?

He needed to focus, needed to find a fix before he actually went and lost his mind. (Was that even possible with this virus? What exactly happened to you once it had run far enough along? He'd never had the taste for running mean-spirited shit like this—at least, not if he wasn't getting paid for it—and now he was wishing he'd paid a bit more attention back in the day.) At the same time, though, he needed to be touching Jensen; ignoring him had gone from difficult to impossible.

A twitch of Jensen's mouth against the curve of Pritchard's hand brought him back to reality. Not a smile, but right now even the idea was close enough to raise his hackles. "You're not helping."

"No," Jensen agreed. It was, at least, more of a concession than Pritchard normally got from him. He pushed in closer, fingers skimming the bottom of Pritchard's ribs. "It's worse for me, remember?"

"Ugh." Pritchard desperately wanted to rub at his temples, to push back his building headache, but if he let go of the death grip he had on the armrest of his chair there was nowhere else his free hand could possibly end up but pressed against Jensen's skin. "I take it back, I clearly have the worst of this. I'm the one who has to deal with _you_."

Jensen snorted out something that might have been a laugh, though he was in no shape to be laughing. Even through the unnatural chill of their touch, Pritchard could tell he was burning up. Sweat beaded across his forehead and he followed each minuscule movement of Pritchard's hand as if his life depended on it.

Pritchard needed his hands free to keep working, but Jensen needed Pritchard's hands to keep from completely fucking losing it once and for all. And wouldn't that be something to explain to Sarif, he thought, if the man's favorite employee survived a terrorist attack and the loss of most of his body only to fall to second-rate outdated government tech and a bribed technician. (Not to mention the effect it would have on him; any replacement Sarif brought in would probably be half as competent and every bit as insufferable. As much as an ex-cop with a spotty record hired by way of nepotism could be good at their job, Jensen was good at his. Not that Pritchard would ever say so. He'd never hear the end of it, from Jensen or from Sarif.)

Inspiration struck like lightning—he wasn't sure if he hadn't thought of it before because this was the worst idea he'd ever had and he hadn't been desperate enough to consider something so stupid until now, or because it was absolutely brilliant and the neediness of the virus had been sapping his creative thinking skills without contact to counteract it. Both, he decided, as he slowly moved his hand in front of him, forcing Jensen to follow along or lose the connection.

"What are you doing?" Jensen growled out. 

"Look, just—work with me here, okay, I'm running low on useful ideas." The little noise Jensen made in response to that somehow managed to say _exactly_ what he thought of the average quality of Pritchard's ideas. "Just get in front of me and… I don't know, grab my ankle or something. I need both hands free."

Jensen grumbled a little at that, but he followed Pritchard's lead nonetheless, moving awkwardly to keep as much of himself in contact with Pritchard as possible; one hand drew a trail across Pritchard's stomach, the other caught briefly on his knee, his thigh, the top of his belt, leaving little bursts of pleasure wherever they landed.

The end result was Jensen tucked in against Pritchard's computer desk, kneeling between his legs with his head very nearly in Pritchard's lap, back arched slightly to avoid smacking his head or dislodging any important wires. Sarif-branded augs gleamed dark against a backdrop of Sarif-branded furniture and cabling. Probably this was someone's fetish. Quite possibly it was Sarif's, though Pritchard tried not to think about what might get his boss hot under the collar. He was just happy he had such a big desk; this floor had been evacuated of personnel, but if any of the security cameras had been able to catch this he would've had to spend the rest of the night bypassing his own systems to destroy the evidence.

"There," Pritchard said.

Jensen gave him a look. It was, somehow, entirely understandable even through the barrier of his mirrored glasses. "Tell me how this is any better than before. Unless you just wanted to annoy me?" 

He shifted a bit, coincidentally pushing his hand in better contact with Pritchard's ribs. Pritchard sucked in a breath, then—slowly, shakily—let it out. Someone had to keep their head around here.

Pritchard sighed. "At this point, as long as you stop trying to use my hands, I don't care _what_ you do. I don't have any touchless typing implants and, shockingly, it's a bit difficult to move the mouse through sheer willpower."

"Sounds like you didn't plan that very well."

Pritchard could have hit him. Would have tried, even, except that between Jensen's dermal armor and his police training Pritchard knew full well which of them that would hurt more. As it was, he rolled his eyes and resolved to do something annoying to Jensen's computer when he had the chance. "Yes, well, next time _your_ security measures fail and dump a virus straight into my brain, I'll make sure I have something ready to save this company's ass. Not like I'm not constantly keeping this place afloat anyway."

"Hmm," was all Jensen said. 

Pritchard should have seen the warning sign for what it was—as if Jensen could ever let something drop without a final parting shot—but he was too busy feeling a little bit smug and a little bit self-satisfied and a little bit out of his fucking mind with the desire to pull Jensen up and kiss that stupid smirk off his face. 

It was reasonable, he thought, that he might not have expected Jensen to reach up and, without a moment's hesitation, shred Pritchard's cargo pants apart just above the knee.

"What the hell, Jensen!" He tried to pull away, but before he could manage to get a decent kick in Jensen's smooth hands were sliding up his calves and fuck, _fuck_ , he couldn't bear to run from that. He relaxed into the perfect chill, sighing as Jensen chased the hot pins-and-needles agony away, annoyed about it all the while. 

"You told me I could do whatever I wanted," Jensen said, so mild-tempered and reasonable that Pritchard could feel the sarcasm rolling off his body in waves. "And I didn't touch your hands."

"See, funny, story, _ah_ "—Jensen's fingers smoothed over a patch of scar tissue on his knee and suddenly it was all Pritchard could do not to rub up against him like a desperate animal—"when I said, _I don't care what you do_ , I sort of assumed the _within the bounds of reason and common sense_ part was implied."

"An oversight on your part, then."

This time Pritchard did try to kick him; Jensen caught his foot before it got halfway through the swing, and then amused himself by running his fingers across the point above Pritchard's ankle where his skin disappeared into his boot. "You're insufferable," he snapped. "These were nice clothes."

Jensen, owner of a nineteen-hundred-credit coat, raised an eyebrow. "If you're that upset about it, I won't do it again."

Tempting to say yes, to deny Jensen what he clearly wanted. But his neglected leg ached right down to his bones. He could feel the pain so much more intensely on the one left untouched now that Jensen's hands were sliding across his calf and to his knee.

Pritchard huffed out a sigh. "You've already ruined them, so…"

"Mm." Jensen didn't laugh. He didn't have to. Pritchard could feel it in the silence there. "No point in trying to save them now, then."

"Exactly," Pritchard said, shaky, and lifted his other leg so Jensen could tear away the fabric there too.

It went quicker after that, once they'd settled into a rhythm they could work with, one where they both could steadfastly pretend they weren't dying for every hint of contact between them. Pritchard kept his eyes on the screen as Jensen's hands beneath the desk roamed across his lower legs up to his knees and—occasionally, with an almost guilty quickness—darted up under the fabric of his pants (shorts now, he supposed) to paint comfort across his thighs. Every so often he'd lean in and rub his face against Pritchard's leg or nip soft marks into the side of his knees. Each time it happened Pritchard had to bite down on his cheek and curl his hands into fists until he could push past the urge to grab Jensen and pull him into his lap. 

He was a professional. He had work to do. He'd suffered through worse than this. (Never mind that he couldn't remember _when_. Surely at some point in his career he'd coded while distracted by something more interesting than a bit of pain and an annoying coworker with his head in Pritchard's lap.)

Pritchard clicked through increasingly dodgy sites, places he hadn't visited since his arrest; occasionally, when the stabbing ache in his palms became too much to bear, he'd reach down and cup Jensen's cheek in one hand before returning to his work. By now he was certain he could draw from memory a map showing each scar and augmentation and patch of stubble on Jensen's face.

Time seemed to move slower and slower the further the virus spread: each keystroke was agony, each loading screen he hit was taunting him personally. Every second that ticked by he told himself, _At least it can't get any worse than this_ , and every time he found himself proven wrong in the second that followed. There was a reason he'd never been much for gambling. Jensen's body—his skin, his hair, his augmentations—was the only thing that offered relief from the torture, and that in and of itself was its own entirely separate sort of torture.

Finally, he managed to hit gold in the form of an entry on an illicit aug-ware torrenting site that looked like it hadn't been updated in half a decade. AMBROSIAPATCH.TORRENT was the name, seeded by three people and sandwiched between ADVANCEDLANGUAGELEARNING.TORRENT and ANTIVIRUSFREEGUARANTEED.TORRENT. Pritchard had never seen a more beautiful combination of letters in his life.

He pulled his hands away from the keys and from Jensen's body just long enough to hook a data chip to his computer. When the download started processing, he fell back against his chair with a heavy sigh. "I've got it," he said. "It's downloading now." 

"Good," Jensen said, voice filled with such a desperate relief that Pritchard nearly pitied him. 

"Well—" Pritchard started.

"How long?"

"Five minutes," Pritchard said. "Maybe ten."

"We're in the headquarters of a major tech corporation," Jensen asked, teeth gritted, "and the fastest you can download a file is _five minutes_?"

Pritchard rolled his eyes. "It's nothing to do with the internet speed. Fixes for obscure sex viruses don't exactly have people lining up to seed their torrents, shockingly. And I'll need to run a security scan before I start jamming foreign software into our bodies."

Malware hidden inside a fix for malware was the oldest trick in the book. Pritchard had used it himself before. Best case scenario, their augmentations would end up connected to some wannabe internet overlord's botnet, two more unwitting attack vectors on the internet of things. The worst case scenario started with major organ failure and went downhill from there.

He'd expected another sarcastic jab back, as familiar as a return ping when playing online, but instead Jensen just bowed his head and took a deep shuddering breath. 

"Fine, then," he said.

His hands weren't shaking—not like they could, with Sarif-brand gyroscopic technology installed—and he wasn't screaming in agony, but there could be absolutely no question he was in pain. He looked like a man barely hanging onto control of his own mind.

 _Worse and worse_ , Pritchard remembered. Excruciating for him, by now, and far worse than that for Jensen.

Pritchard had gone through the READMEs for this particular virus back in the day. Pretty much everyone in their little corner of the internet had; between the outrageous symptoms and the horrific mangling of the English language it made for something of a rite of passage among the dark net's various hacking subcultures. The documentation, such as it was, recommended physical contact to halt the spread of the symptoms. Very, very close physical contact. _Fuck them to distraction_ , if he remembered the exact wording right.

He'd laughed at that. Probably he'd even bookmarked the page, sitting in front of his underpowered computer in his dingy basement apartment, in case he'd ever needed a laugh again. Being here now, in front of Jensen, made all of that seem much less funny.

He knew the virus. He knew how to hold back the symptoms. The question wasn't _could he_ ; he was no Casanova, but he had some basic experience, and anyway it wasn't as if Jensen had any right to be picky at a moment like this. The question was, _would he_? Would he be able to work with Jensen after? To look Sarif in the eyes and explain—in as little detail as possible—just what they'd done in Pritchard's fancy glass-paneled office?

It wasn't exactly as if he'd never entertained the idea before. Jensen had meddled in the affairs of Pritchard's department often enough that his normal revenge fantasies—punch him in the face, delete all his work documents, dig up whatever dirty laundry a man like Jensen had to have and spread it around the company—had lost their novelty, and so he'd occasionally entertained idle thoughts of bending Jensen over his own sparse desk and making him beg just to switch things up a little. But there was a difference, he knew, between wanting to fuck someone over a little more literally than normal and _this_ : staring down at Jensen's drawn and desperate face, aching with need, wanting to reach out and kiss him and push the pain away.

There was nothing personal about any of it, Pritchard told himself. Nothing beyond basic courtesy. It was just… 

It would be cruel, to leave Jensen like this. He was clearly suffering. And Pritchard could be a lot of things—uncooperative, according to his arrest record; lacking in interpersonal skills, according to his latest employee review; a _fucking nuisance with shit taste in TV_ , according to emails he'd pulled off Picus's servers—but he wasn't cruel. Not to someone he tolerated, the way he did Jensen.

Fine, then. No problem. He could manage this.

Pritchard kicked his boot off using the leg of his chair as leverage, and—quickly, without giving himself enough time to think about how monumentally awful an idea this was, how Jensen might very well kill him for it—pressed his sock-clad foot against the outline of Jensen's dick.

Even on the sole of his foot, through layers of fabric, the coolness was there. Like only realizing you'd been walking across hot coals when you finally made it to the other side. Jensen felt it more than him, if the way he suddenly all-but-melted against Pritchard was any indication.

"Fuck," Jensen hissed. For a moment he thrust back, rolling his hips to drag his body against the weight of Pritchard's foot, and then he shuddered and forced himself to still. The effort it took was visible in every line of his body. His hands tensed and relaxed against Pritchard's skin, fingers digging in deep enough to hit the edge where pleasure turned to pain before soothing the ache away.

Pritchard wanted to force him past that, to wake up when this whole thing was over with purple handprints pressed into his skin. By then, he was sure, he'd be mortified to see them; he'd be angry and alone and embarrassed, trying desperately to pretend the virus was the only reason he'd ever wanted this at all. 

Didn't matter. He'd remember.

"Come on," Pritchard hissed out, pressing the sole of his foot a little harder against the layers of cloth. "It's fine, it's fine, just—"

He was barely coherent anymore. Luckily, Jensen seemed to understand him. He pulled his hands away from Pritchard—fucking _rude_ —and fumbled his own belt open and his zipper down so his dick could finally spring free. 

Jensen whined a little at that, ran his hand over the underside of his shaft as if he thought it might help. No way it would; every time Pritchard so much as brushed his hand against his own face it seemed to make the fire under his skin worse. For all that people had laughed about it when it first showed up on the market, this was an evil little virus.

Pritchard couldn't help but sneak a look. Professional curiosity, he told himself. Nothing weird. (As if this entire situation hadn't already spiraled past _weird_ , barreled through _strange_ , and crash-landed deep in the fields of _completely insane_.) Jensen was… well-proportioned, to say the least, cut, and achingly hard. Around the head there was a discolored spot, dark gray and smooth, a shadow falling oddly across his body or maybe—and Pritchard stopped himself, forced his eyes back up towards Jensen's. If Sarif had augmented Jensen there, he didn't want to know about it. There were some things a person couldn't unlearn.

Jensen's hands moved to Pritchard's foot suddenly, pulling his sock off with a clumsy urgency. His fingers wrapped around the top of his foot, his palms pressed against the calloused pad underneath. Pritchard scowled in the vague direction of Jensen's face as he tried not to arch into the touch. It felt better than it had any right to; Jensen's hands pressed against the foreign heat and the familiar old aches there all at once. If he ended up with some weird new fetish out of all of this, he was making Sarif give him a raise.

Pritchard pulled his foot from Jensen's grasp, nerves making him desperate, and slid it back against the join where the metal of his inner thigh met flesh. The head of Jensen's dick was already slick with pre-cum, and it was all too easy to just… push in a little closer, run the side of his foot along his dick and smear that wetness down his length.

Jensen sucked in a sudden breath, reaching up to make handholds in what was left of Pritchard's pants, and he ducked his head against the side of Pritchard's leg like he was trying to hide his face.

A bit rich, Pritchard thought sourly, considering he already had his eyes completely covered. There was exactly one of them here who ought to be worried about showing too much emotion, and it sure as hell wasn't Jensen. The man had been about as readable as a brick wall even before he'd had a _tactical emotional shield_ grafted onto his face. 

(Beneath that, harder to acknowledge: he wanted to see. Wanted to know exactly what he was doing to Jensen right now.)

Pritchard reached down and tilted Jensen's head up with a single finger; no need to use force when simple contact had so much effect right now. "You know," he said, mouth twisted flat, putting on his very best poker face as if he hadn't always been miserable at cards, "it's kind of rude to wear sunglasses indoors."

"Hm," Jensen said, showing off what an actual poker face looked like.

"At night."

"Mm-hmm."

"While I've got my foot on your"—Pritchard pressed down a little too hard, just for emphasis, but instead of Jensen drawing back in pain his mouth dropped open into a little _o_ and he arched into the touch.

"Ah," Pritchard said. For a moment, he almost pulled away. He had to have misinterpreted that.

But no, there was a flush creeping up Jensen's cheeks and his dick felt, if anything, even harder underneath Pritchard's touch. A side effect of the virus, or did Jensen _really_ just like getting kicked around a little?

Not like it mattered, he reminded himself. This was the only time he was ever going to find himself within touching range of Jensen's dick, so for his purposes there was no real difference between the two. Blackmail material, maybe, but it wasn't like he wasn't capable enough of finding that on his own; it would be completely unsporting to use things that happened here as fodder.

(He wanted to know, though. The image rose, unbidden, to the front of his mind. Somewhere a little more suitable. Pritchard's apartment, maybe. Jensen flat on his back, flushed all the way down his body, writhing at the touch of— _absolutely fucking not_ , Pritchard snapped at his own traitor brain, banishing the thought with his nails digging into the meat of his inner arm. Some ideas were too idiotic to entertain for even a moment.) 

It could work for him now, though. Pritchard moved as if to pull away. Before he could manage even an inch, a hand snapped out to catch his ankle.

He and Jensen stared each other down for a moment, Pritchard glaring in the direction of his glasses, Jensen presumably giving as good as he got. Silence. More silence. 

And then Jensen sighed heavily, and said, in the tone of someone deeply affected and trying desperately not to be, "Fine. If you're so fixated on it."

With a soft _snick_ , the glasses pulled away into their crescent-moon indents.

It was… huh. Apparently Pritchard had spent more time than he'd thought pre-surgery angrily glaring into Jensen's eyes, because his immediate first thought was, _That's not right_.

He'd known Sarif had probably taken them with the rest. Jensen's particular model of glasses didn't fit well to unaugmented bone, and cranioskeletal replacements didn't tend to mesh well with soft, squishy organic eyes. _Pulped to jelly,_ if he recalled one particularly descriptive warning off the manuals correctly. 

He hadn't expected the replacements to be quite so showy, though. His own fault for underestimating the Sarif Industries trademark style.

Gone was the soft grey he remembered. (It didn't fit with his look, anyway, Pritchard had always thought, too mild a color in too punchable a face.) Instead, they'd had opted for poisonous green ringed by bright, gleaming gold. Probably actual gold, knowing their boss.

Pritchard thought a moment. No, scratch that. Definitely actual gold.

Still, for all their strangeness, there was a certain elegance to them. A hawklike intensity to Jensen's stare that couldn't be chalked up to the virus. Pritchard let his gaze drop away.

Jensen snorted. "All that complaining, and you'd rather stare at your keyboard?" 

"It makes for a better view," Pritchard snapped.

Jensen muttered something in response—an insult towards computer geeks or internet addicts or just Pritchard as a person, Pritchard wasn't sure.

Fine, then. If Jensen wanted to annoy the man with a foot tucked near his balls, that was his own stupid decision to make. The option to cause some _real_ pain was there, and it was tempting, but instead he let his foot slide against Jensen experimentally. Setting a pace.

"Tease," muttered Jensen quietly, and Pritchard scowled and tugged at his hair and started in earnest.

It wasn't as if Pritchard had researched this any, but he was pretty sure it was supposed to be gentle: a light touch, running the soles of his feet down the length of Jensen's dick, no doubt doing some sort of something with his toes. Normal bizarre internet fetish stuff.

This was none of that. Pritchard was rough and clumsy with it, pressing hard against Jensen's shaft before sliding his way up towards the head. Jensen thrust back against each movement, no matter how rough, with one hand wrapped around Pritchard's hip tight enough to bruise and the other pressed flat against his stomach.

They moved together, awkward in their coordination, touching not for exploration but to spread the cold-water relief between them. It scared Pritchard a little, how easily they read each other. Jensen grimaced and Pritchard scratched soft lines down his scalp without being asked, Pritchard's leg shook as the pain came arcing back up his calves and Jensen's hands were there to push it back down before he could so much as ask. Always, Jensen's hands returned to Pritchard's stomach whenever he wasn't actively helping him out. He traced the curve of Pritchard's ribs down to his belly button and back up again like he liked it, like he wasn't just doing this because their lives had turned overnight into an absurdist porno. Pritchard, for his part, found himself wanting to keep his hands in Jensen's hair or stroking against the twin commas of his sleek black eyeshield ports. Found himself wishing, whenever his position shifted, that he had a better angle, that he could have reached down and run his hands along the corded carbon sunken into the tendons of his neck, pressed his thumb into the dip of the Typhoon ports, traced the lines on his shoulders and hips where the metal braided into his flesh—

Because of the virus, of course. And because Jensen's tech was at least interesting, unlike the rest of him.

It wasn't long before Jensen's thrusts grew rough and uncoordinated and even more desperate, hips jerking out of time and the muscles in his back and stomach twitching whenever Pritchard rubbed his foot against Jensen's dick at just the right angle. Jensen let his forehead rest against Pritchard's thigh, trying and not quite succeeding at hiding his face.

 _Come on_ , Pritchard thought, letting his foot slide across Jensen's skin even faster, _Come on, come on_. He wanted to see Jensen needy and undone, wanted to know it was him who'd brought him there. Wanted to be the one who could give him this.

And Jensen choked out a soft noise as his eyes fluttered closed, said from between gritted teeth, "Pritchard, _ah_ —" and then his hips rolled one more time as he came with a quiet sob across Pritchard's skin.

For a moment, neither of them moved. Jensen was sucking in huge lungfuls of air, lying spent against Pritchard's knee and leg. Finally, he managed to pull away a bit, drawing his hands back for a moment before seeming to remember that the heat wasn't still gone and hastily laying them back against Pritchard's skin.

"Better?" Pritchard asked, aiming for unaffected and coming out as far from it as humanly possibly. 

Jensen blinked slowly. He risked separation long enough to run a hand through his hair and then settled back against Pritchard. "I mean," he said, "Somewhat. It's still there."

"Obviously." Pritchard rolled his eyes. "How are you imagining anti-viruses work?"

Still. That was—that was something, at least. Enough to keep Jensen calmed down and sane and not-overheating for a while. For all that he hadn't been properly touched at all, Pritchard was breathing hard himself, short sharp breaths that only seemed to pull more burning-hot air into his lungs. 

_3:25_ , the timer on his screen estimated, which knowing his system meant at least four minutes more. He should've known five minutes total was way too short an estimate. 

Jensen would no longer be such a distraction, at least. All Pritchard had to do was sit here, keep his hands to himself, and think about literally anything other than the noises Jensen had made when he was coming. 

Fuck. Pritchard ran one hand through his sweat-soaked hair. His ponytail was nearly falling out, and his brain felt not too far away from melting and dripping out his ear canals. Maybe if he pulled Jensen into his lap the man would lay there quietly long enough for Pritchard to get his wits back about himself.

Pritchard belatedly pulled his foot back from its spot tucked against Jensen's metal thigh. He grimaced at the feeling of cum stuck between his toes, then tried discreetly to rub some of it onto Jensen's expensive pants. His own mess, he could damn well help clean it up.

His foot slid higher. Jensen made a cut-off little sound, trying to pull away but constricted by the desk. 

Pritchard stopped still, brain working overtime to process what he'd just felt.

Jensen was still achingly hard.

 _Well,_ Pritchard thought tiredly, _that answers the augmented dick question_. He was fairly certain the virus didn't shorten refractory periods any. The Pandora's box of Sarif's horrifying boundary issues had been opened, and if Pritchard could have closed it any way short of giving himself a frontal lobotomy he would have done it in a heartbeat. 

God. What the fuck. The discovery should have sent him backing away, but instead not thinking about getting Jensen off had gone from difficult to literally impossible. How many times could he go before he was finally spent? Would it even feel good past the first few? Maybe a couple more rounds would finally be enough to keep him in line for a little while. He couldn't help but imagine it: Jensen spread out and gasping with equal parts need and agony, painfully over-sensitized dick twitching, coming raw and dry as Pritchard wrang yet another orgasm out of him, and god _damn_ did that frontal lobotomy sound better and better by the second. Maybe it would be covered in the employee healthcare plan; apparently fucking everything else was.

"Jensen," he said, hating himself for speaking and completely unable to stop.

"What?" Jensen snarled out, rougher than was even close to necessary. He glared up at Pritchard, eyes exposed and expressive and very fucking angry, just daring him to comment.

Lucky for them both that Pritchard was beyond putting sentences together like a logical goddamned human being at this point. His tongue felt stuck to the roof of his mouth, his skin too large and too small at once, and his body—

—well, his body was clear about one thing, at least. Every single part of him wanted Jensen so badly that it hurt.

Pritchard ran his tongue over his teeth and tried to school his expression into something that said _fuck off_ instead of _fuck me_. It didn't seem to work; Jensen stared at him a long, long moment, eyes bright and calculating. 

"Feeling left out?" he asked. Just trying to be a nuisance, Pritchard knew, testing how he could best get Pritchard to back off from a conversation he obviously didn't want to have, but the jab hit far too close to home.

With an angry hiss, Pritchard kicked out at Jensen, only succeeding in smacking his foot against a metal thigh hard enough to make his toes sting. 

Fucking mil-spec limbs. Pritchard swore, wishing he could bear to be away from Jensen long enough to get some space. He needed to stop thinking about Jensen like this, to stop looking at him and noticing all sorts of things he shouldn't. The way the dim light gleamed off his exposed augs, the sweep of his mussed-up hair... if he had to think of Jensen at all, he ought to keep it to impersonal things.

 _He's a living, breathing person,_ Pritchard thought. _He's convenient, he's got hands and a little bit of skin. Occasionally he's capable of following basic orders._ That was all.

He wasn't even fooling himself, so it was no surprise Jensen wasn't fooled either. His expression changed the longer his little jab hung in the air between them, going from anger to something far too close to concern for Pritchard to be okay with it.

"It's hitting you too, huh." It wasn't a question, the way he said it.

"Oh, please just shut up," Pritchard snapped. "Unlike _some_ people, I'm actually capable of controlling myself."

"Mm-hmm." Jensen gave him a once-over, eyes catching everywhere Pritchard didn't want him to see: his flushed cheeks, his shaking hands, his dick straining against his torn pants. He took it all in, and then (carefully, gently) he said, "There's time left until the download finishes."

"Oh, you can count! No wonder Sarif hired you."

A vicious little thrill of victory ran through Pritchard as Jensen's eyes narrowed in annoyance. Still, he hadn't managed to force him off track; he just took a deep, patient breath, and continued with, "I'm just saying. If you need help..."

Jensen's eyes flicked downward. The gesture told Pritchard exactly what the end of that sentence was going to be.

The correct answer was to say no. The more correct answer was to mock him for even offering. _My, Jensen, you do think highly of yourself. Don't let me hold you back. You head down to Derelict Row, you could charge a good five credits an hour there. Maybe ten, if you're lucky._

The answer he wanted to give, though... well, it wasn't a no. He compromised by saying nothing at all.

He and Jensen stared at each other a while, neither of them speaking. The itching urge to touch grew stronger every second. It was worst in his palms, his toes, his stomach, all the places where he'd already felt Jensen's sleek cool hands on him and knew he could again if he only asked.

Pritchard broke first. (Not his fault his fault. He'd never been given police training. All his experience in interrogation came from the other side of the table.) He rolled his eyes and said, "Look, you can"—he paused, trying to find the words that wouldn't humiliate him—"you can do what you want, okay? I won't stop you."

Jensen gave him a flat, unimpressed stare. "Right. Okay."

 _Seriously?_ Pritchard thought with a scowl. They were already in one of the most fucking absurd situations of Pritchard's life—a category with impressive competition, considering all the shit top-tier black hats saw—and here Jensen was going to act like he wanted a handwritten invite? Pritchard hadn't realized he was going to need stationery and gilt-edged envelopes for tonight's job.

(He wasn't angry about that just because he was embarrassed to have to ask, he told himself. As it turned out, he hadn't become any better at fooling himself in the past thirty seconds or so.)

All he had to do to preserve his dignity was stay silent. All he had to do to get what he wanted was speak up.

"Fine," Pritchard snapped, "if you're going to be that way. _Please._ " All the sarcasm he could muster went into that single, bitten-out word.

The look Jensen gave him said that his second attempt hadn't been all that much better than the first, but nonetheless Jensen finally ( _finally_ , Pritchard thought, more pathetically grateful than he'd ever been in his life) crawled forward an extra half-step, letting Pritchard's spread legs bracket him more thoroughly than ever, and ran his polycarbonate hands over Pritchard's knees and across his thighs. His finger circled around a patch of scar tissue just above his kneecap before wandering upwards. 

Pritchard bit down on a moan, trying to keep it from escaping his throat. The purposeful focus in Jensen's eyes made the coolness of his hands so much more intense. He could feel it even through the heavy fabric of his pants, as clear as if Jensen were caressing his bare skin.

Jensen's gaze flicked downward to where his erection was straining against the zipper of his jeans. Pritchard held himself still, desperate and aching, wanting Jensen's touch and readying himself for the moment when Jensen would pull back and let the second thoughts he must be having show through.

Caught up in his thoughts as he was, he wasn't prepared in the slightest for Jensen to lean in and, without hesitation, press his mouth against the cloth-covered head of Pritchard's dick to lap clumsily at the fabric there.

The _noise_ he made then; it sounded like someone had punched Pritchard in the throat and, fittingly, it felt that way too. Having his airway cut off would explain why a shaky little wordless gasp slipped from his mouth before he could stop it, why his heart jumped with sudden dizzying adrenaline.

Pritchard's hands went up to curl in Jensen's hair, dragging him that little bit closer, grinding up against his face with a desperate humiliating urgency. If Jensen would just keep doing that, let Pritchard relax into that pressure and contact and the intoxicating headiness of his presence...

He wasn't going to last long. Not like this.

"Fuck," he sobbed, "Jensen, please, _Adam_ —"

Pritchard bit down on his words and his tongue both, welcomed the sudden burst of pain even as grimaced around the iron-and-salt taste that flooded his mouth. It brought him back to himself a little. At the very least, it kept him from babbling out anything that might embarrass him more.

Jensen glanced up at Pritchard through half-lidded eyes at the sound of his name. The heat in those gold-green eyes was enough to send a shiver down his spine. The way he looked at him, it felt like he was the only thing in Jensen's world right now, like Jensen couldn't even imagine focusing on anything else. His tongue pressed against his cloth-covered erection once more, taunting or hesitant or _something_ , and Pritchard—

He wasn't going to beg. Not here, not now, and not to Adam fucking Jensen. Instead he gathered up every meagre scrap of self-control he still had in him, reached a hand down to stroke along the line of Jensen's jaw and said, in a voice that almost sounded steady, "A bit of professional advice: if you're planning to actually _do_ something, don't be such a tease about it."

That, thankfully, seemed to be all the encouragement Jensen needed to actually act. He leaned up, caught the top button of Pritchard's pants between his teeth and ( _Holy fuck,_ Pritchard thought) crushed the metal and ripped it straight out of the fabric with a quick jerk of his head.

Pritchard should have berated Jensen for that. More destruction of his personal property, and there was absolutely no call for Jensen to be biting down on things that close to Pritchard's dick. But the sheer desperation of it, the wild-animal ferocity in the way he tore it away, sent a flash of arousal straight through Pritchard.

He hadn't even needed to use his hands.

His zipper followed a moment later—clasped between Jensen's teeth and pulled down, thankfully, rather than ripped away—and then Jensen was tugging at the top of Pritchard's boxers to let his dick slip free.

Pritchard hissed as the open air hit his body. It should have been cooler, even if only a little, but right now nothing could cut through the molten haze of vicious desire swimming through his veins. All he could think about was finally having something to soothe that ache. Finally having _Adam_ —

No. Pritchard shut the thought down. _Jensen_ was a conveniently-close warm body. That was all. This had absolutely nothing to do with him in particular, no matter how much interest his traitor brain had in things like the color of Jensen's eyes and the way he looked when he was desperate. Foreign hormones could do a lot to a person.

Jensen made an appreciative little noise in the back of his throat at the sight of Pritchard's dick. It was the sort of thing that Pritchard should've rolled his eyes at—really, now, there was no call for acting all surprised about it—but instead he couldn't help feeling pleased. And then Jensen's mouth wrapped around the head of his dick and suddenly he couldn't help anything at all.

For a moment he just lapped at the head, a torture Pritchard had never in his life felt before, but after a moment or two he wrapped one sleek hand around the base of Pritchard's dick and, inch by inch, agonizingly slowly, swallowed down the rest of his length. He kept one hand wrapped loosely around the base until he'd swallowed enough down that his lips were pressing against the smooth carbon of his fingers, and then he slid those fingers away and took him even further into his throat.

The noise Pritchard made then wasn't human. It was soft and choked and broken, entirely too sentimental to have come out of his throat. Pritchard slapped a hand over his mouth to try and contain it. 

Never mind not begging Jensen for anything. If he could have this again, he'd get down on both knees and kiss Jensen's feet for it.

After a few moments of Jensen's mouth around him, Pritchard's brain finally came back online well enough to see the way Jensen was still sweating. There was no way he was doing the same thing for Jensen twice—he didn't have the coordination for it right now, for one—so instead he clumsily hooked his foot around the inside of Jensen's thigh. Slowly, carefully, Pritchard urged Jensen closer until he had Pritchard's calf trapped between his thighs. After a moment, he seemed to realize what Pritchard intended; Jensen rocked against Pritchard's leg, let out a quiet groan at the friction, and then began to roll his hips in slow, short thrusts as he worked his mouth over Pritchard.

This should have been embarrassing. Completely disgusting. Jensen rutting up against him like a dog, Jensen clumsy with need as he swallowed down Pritchard's dick. He had standards, for god's sake. He should have made some crack about _Sarif's watchdog_ and then left him to take care of himself without involving Pritchard's body in any of this idiocy.

And yet, he wanted this. It was getting harder and harder to deny how much he wanted this, how deep-down the wanting went. How much of the want was Jensen, specifically, rather than a simple virus-driven urge towards any warm body he could get his hands on. He'd be thinking about this afterwards for a long time: Jensen on his knees for him, Jensen's mouth wrapped around him, Jensen staring up and him with those gold-ringed eyes as he swallowed down to the base of his dick. Just knowing the noises Jensen made like this, the sloppy little sounds that slipped out from around his lips and the quick shallow breaths he sucked in when he pulled back for air, was going to make for a few months' worth of frustrated torture.

(A few months. Ha. God, he could only hope it would fade so quickly.)

And meanwhile Jensen would probably be over this in a heartbeat—another step to add to the dance of their daily insults, a jab to join the jokes about caffeine and anime and the name _Francis_ said in just the perfect way to raise Pritchard's hackles. _Got a problem with my mouth,_ Francis _? You didn't seem to mind it before._

What a fucking idiot he was, letting himself get even the slightest bit sentimental over Jensen of all people. He used to think Reed's shit taste in men was funny. Somewhere beyond the grave, he was sure, she'd be laughing at him right now.

He didn't want to think about that. Instead he kept pressing back against the heat, running his hands over Jensen's body wherever he could touch—through sweat-soaked hair, across broad and metal-studded shoulders, over his face so that Pritchard could feel the outline of his own dick against Jensen's cheek—and gave himself over to the noises he'd been so desperately trying to hold back.

"Please," he said, "fuck, come on," a hundred other little platitudes intercut with wordless noises, alternating between begging him one moment and insulting him the next.

He was close, so close, Jensen getting closer with him as his thrusts grew shorter and harsher and more desperate, and he could _feel_ —

A shift of color across the computer screen pulled his attention away from Jensen's body. _DOWNLOAD COMPLETE_ , the computer screen read, and Pritchard scrambled to eject the USB drive with the one hand he could spare. Cure in his hands now, just needed to tell Jensen to stop, have him lean back so he could inject the pronged wires into the flesh-toned access port just above his heart.

Jensen swallowed around him, throat tightening with the motion, and Pritchard let the thumb drive drop from between fumbling fingers so he could press both hands against Jensen.

"Fuck," he said, "fuck, I'm—"

He couldn't get out the words to form a proper warning, but Jensen understood him. Understood him, and then, instead of pulling off, sunk down on Pritchard right to the hilt, tongued at the base of his dick and swallowed sloppily around him, and let Pritchard grab his hair tight and come with a bitten-off wordless " _Ah_ ," down his throat.

Jensen didn't pull off until he'd helped Pritchard through the last of it, working him gently as he shook and shuddered and finally began to soften in his mouth. If anything, it seemed to urge him on further: he groaned as Pritchard pulled his hair, gave two more short, jerking thrusts, and came with a whine across the front of Pritchard's leg. 

Pritchard stared for a moment at the small streak of white he'd left on Pritchard's skin. He'd come nearly dry. That shouldn't have been hot. And the way he was still chasing the feeling, hips grinding weakly against Pritchard's leg even as he softened, shouldn't have been hot either. Pritchard wondered for a moment if Jensen was about to get hard _again_ , what he'd even look like begging for a third round, if he'd have anything left inside him at all if Pritchard wrapped a hand around his dick and urged him on again.

And then he turned back towards his desk, saw the flash drive lying there, and remembered—

"Shit," he snapped. "Jensen, come here, stop lazing around, I need to—" He pushed at Jensen's shoulders, trying to force him a little bit further so he could access what he needed.

Jensen gave him a look that suggested he was about to say exactly who he thought was lazing around, but then he saw the flash drive Pritchard was holding between two fingers. His eyes went wide and he scrambled up to give Pritchard better access to the port.

Pritchard ran his hand down the line of Jensen's muscle until he felt the artificial seam (and oh, didn't that feel good) and slid it away with the tips of two fingers dug into the flesh. Strange, even as long as he'd been working here, to see something that looked like skin and yet didn't feel like it; he much preferred sleek blacks and grays that projected their function without trying to hide or seem normal to the unaugmented.

Jensen's access port was state-of-the-art, only a few millimeters of artificiality set into a frame of organic skin. (Though in Jensen's case, that natural skin was then set into a frame of even more augmentations—the man was more metal than meat with everything Sarif had installed.) It only took Pritchard a moment to slide the small device into the connector there; Jensen's eyes flickered a moment, accepting the download, and then all at once he let out a great heaving sigh of relief and half-fell over. Pritchard's body was the only thing close enough for him to catch himself on. He grabbed at his knee like a drowning man coming upon a life raft in the waves. No fingers stroking the skin this time, no desperate desire. Just shock and relief and, crawling in at the edges with a slight blush, the beginnings of shame.

It still felt good to Pritchard, though, being touched that way, and the sudden imbalance of power was enough to send him fumbling to pull out the drive and plunge it into his own access socket. His was tucked away at the base of his neck, hidden by his collar and the sweep of his hair—a much better location than Jensen's, he didn't have to take his shirt off every time he wanted to download some software—and he slid it into place with an ease borne of years of practice.

 _WARNING: SOFTWARE IS OF UNTRUSTED ORIGIN. DOWNLOAD ANYWAY?_ his optical implant flashed.

 _Yes_ , Pritchard thought, _yes, yes, yes_ , and finally the program sunk into his system.

It was like being thrown in an ice bath. No warning, no slow change; the warmth in his body slammed up against a wall of ice-cold rationality that swept through him with all the force of a tidal wave. Pritchard clutched at his chair to keep himself in place. A few moments later, his systems finally began to settle down. Neural implant reporting a successful download, health monitor telling him his temperature and heartbeat were returning to baseline levels.

Pritchard leaned back into his chair, stared at the ceiling and said, finally, "Fuck."

"Sounds about right," Jensen said with a dark sort of humor. His voice was even hoarser than usual, a feat Pritchard would have previously believed was impossible. His lips, when Pritchard chanced a glance downward, were half-parted and very red. His tongue flicked out from between his teeth. Pritchard couldn't help but follow the movement with his eyes.

Pritchard ran a quick diagnostic check, just to make sure the download had really applied one-hundred-percent, and—it had. Fuck.

He ran a hand through his hair, tugging at his loose ponytail until it finally gave up entirely. Already it seemed hard to believe that he'd done all of that. With Jensen, no less! And yet the heat-hazed memories weren't going to fade anytime soon. 

Neither was Pritchard's knowledge of the way Jensen looked on his knees.

Jensen gave him an odd look from out of the corner of his still-visible eyes, and then asked, quietly, "How long was that download ready for?"

How long... Pritchard went red as he realized what Jensen meant. Of course he'd noticed. Of course he'd realized the antivirus becoming available the exact second Pritchard came would be a touch too convenient. "Only a moment. Ten seconds or so. I just fumbled the drive, is all." And by fumbled it he meant _got so overwhelmed I couldn't think straight enough to insert Tab A into Slot B in an entirely literal sense_ , but he was pretty sure Jensen could read the subtext there. One of the many reasons he'd chosen to make a name for himself behind the screen of a computer: face-to-face, Pritchard was an awful liar. 

There was a long silence, Jensen staring evenly at Pritchard and Pritchard staring back while trying not to dissolve into a mess of mortification. He swallowed, tongue scraping against the roof of his dry mouth, and added, "I wouldn't. Not—not with something like that."

Another brief pause, and then finally Jensen nodded. His closed-off expression relaxed just a touch as he said, "I believe you."

Pritchard tried not to breathe a sigh of relief too openly. He didn't know what he would've done if Jensen had been convinced he'd had the cure all along and simply decided to withhold it.

Apparently Jensen had decided that little conversation was the whole matter over and done with, because he relaxed back across the line of Pritchard's leg like some kind of nightmarishly overgrown house cat. Do not pet, Pritchard thought dryly, do not acknowledge, do not feed after midnight.

"How are you this bony?" Jensen muttered. "Do you _eat_?"

He sounded even more exhausted than Pritchard felt; the virus had leeched off their systems, forced their biological and mechanical bodies into overdrive to fuel the sudden surge of desire. One of the things that made it such a pain to deal with. And, once again, Jensen had gotten the worst of it. That knowledge was the only thing keeping him from kicking Jensen in the head right now.

"I might eat more if someone stopped stealing my energy bars," he snapped instead, shooting Jensen a glare.

Jensen blinked in response, mock-surprised. Pritchard had forgotten how expressive those eyes of his could be when they weren't hidden behind dark glasses. One corner of his mouth turned up into something that was almost a grin. "You have proof, then? Because it sounds like you're making more wild accusations. Not a good look for an InfoSec expert."

"Ugh." Pritchard scowled at Jensen. "Just for that, you're the one giving this mission report to the boss."

They both knew exactly who was behind the energy bar thefts. He got the feeling that Jensen considered it a test of the security systems; give the computer geek better motivation to fix the holes in his security than a vague sense of a job well done. He hated that it worked. Someday he'd figure out how Jensen was bypassing the cameras, and on that day he'd take copies of the footage and mail it to every news corporation on the planet. Hell, Picus might even run it. The assholes would appreciate the _scary thieving Aug_ angle.

He'd expected an argument, but to his surprise Jensen just nodded. "Fair enough." He stretched, still looking weak and sore, and then pulled away from Pritchard and pushed himself shakily to his feet.

"Wait," Pritchard said, before he could stop himself, "wait, I didn't mean—"

Jensen gave him a look of confusion. "What?"

"...Look. Just go home and get some sleep, okay? I'll talk to Sarif."

He shook his head, mouth set in a stubborn line. "I'm fine. It's my responsibility, anyway."

Pritchard scowled. "Right. My scanners, my floor, my issue. Don't try and claim jurisdiction over this."

It didn't escape Pritchard that he'd been trying to deny all responsibility half an hour ago. From the baffled look Jensen was aiming his way, it didn't escape him either. Pritchard kept his expression fixed and refused to look away. It wasn't like he wasn't allowed to change his mind; Jensen should be glad to have an excuse to wash his hands of the whole thing, not looking at Pritchard like he'd suddenly started speaking in tongues. It was infuriating.

"There's no way I'm missing the debriefing," Jensen said.

"Well, there's no way _I'm_ missing a chance to explain why the tech team needs a budget increase."

The two of them stared at each other.

"Well, this is just stupid," Pritchard said. "This way neither of us wins."

Jensen shrugged. "Business as usual, then."

Pritchard wished he could disagree with that. Instead he just rolled his eyes, then gathered his hair up to force it back into a (frazzled, sloppy) ponytail. "Fine, then. But I'm taking a shower first. And getting a spare set of clothes."

Jensen looked him up and down. Pritchard could only imagine what he was looking at: the torn-up pants, the stains drying on his leg, the bites and bruises spread out across his skin. "Probably a good plan."

"You're taking one too, idiot," Pritchard snapped, and forced his exhausted body upright.

It was—well, it was almost normal. If Jensen leaned on him a little as they walked, if Pritchard slowed his pace to keep up with him, if neither of them was going to try to throw the other into the path of Sarif's frazzled irritation, then that was nothing much. As likely to be a coincidence as anything else, really.

Pritchard could live with that.

**Author's Note:**

> I've got a (much shorter, non-porny) epilogue chapter to this that I'll put up sometime soon.


End file.
